Snow
by LuminaCarina
Summary: ((What horrible things we do for the ones we love the most, he thinks, and he scours the room for any traces of feathers and death. There are none, and he isn't sure how he can be so grateful about that. The entire time Gellert spends sitting on the bed, hiccupping on tiny sobs.)) time travel


**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

**This is… I have no idea. It's up to you to decide. Maybe it's time travel, maybe it's an illusion, and maybe it's all just a dream… **

**I.**

It's cold and crisp, and the purple air crackles around him as he walks. His fingers are blue with frostbite, and he wonders why he even bothers wearing gloves. Still, it's a beautiful evening. He sits on a bench in the empty park and lets his eyes wander over the icy ground. It's white and the only blemishes in the snow are his own footsteps.

''Hello.''

He turns his face to the side, where a pair of blue eyes smiles at him.

''Hello to you, too.''

The boy laughs, high and scratchy, and sits on the bench next to him. He lets his cold fingers wrap around the boy's own warm digits. They sit there without talking, because really, what is there left to say?

Snow falls from the heavens like torn up flowers, and by the time the sun comes up, the boy is long gone.

**II.**

The first time they meet, he thinks he's having a dying vision. That the child standing curiously over him is an angel come to take his soul.

''Please…'' he begs.

The child tilts a head full of shadows to the side.

''Pwease?''

And so he laughs. It's a broken thing, rasping and snapping in all the wrong places, but for the life of him he cannot contain it. When he comes to himself, his fever is gone. So is the child.

**III.**

He thinks he's crazy. Mad. That the war had messed with his head more than he had assumed. Because what other explanation is there, when his steps are haunted by a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes, when the only reason he hadn't drained his veins of red is the image of a round little face, pale under the moonlight.

He tells his friends. His brilliant Hermione looks at him worriedly, and recommends him a discrete healer. He merely snorts and throws the paper in the rubbish bin once she's gone.

But he continues to dream.

He doesn't even know what he's dreaming of, nor why. It's Germany, he finds out, and he does his best to pick up the language. The dreams aren't consistent, either. One night the boy is a toddler, and he dutifully follows him and the child's mother to the park, and the next the boy is nine or ten years old, bullying a few other children into leaving him alone.

Still, he follows, watches over. And somewhere along the way, his confusion gives way to desperate love. Who else can redeem him, after all, if not an innocent babe?

**IV.**

And then, the boy approaches him.

''Mother cannot see you.''

He doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. He isn't insane, he isn't. How else would this precious child be able to see him? He ignores the whispers in the back of his mind telling him his logic is absolute nonsense in favour of answering the boy. Now, if only he could think of something to say…

''Ah. Well, do you want her to see me?''

The boy simply stares at him with something akin to uncertainty, and then he turns around and leaves him to his watching.

**V.**

The first time he sees what cruelty his beloved child is capable of, he almost vomits. Because Gellert Grindelwald is a little monster, no doubt about it.

There is a dead bird cupped in Gellert's hands, blue feathers ruffled and ruined. Harry stares in horror as the boy beams at him, showing off his kill. Those dainty, pale hands and delicate fingers are scratched, and there is a rusty brown under his fingernails.

''Look! Isn't she perfect?''

And Harry does the only thing he can think of. He orders Gellert to get rid of the bird, and he forces the child to scrub at his hands until they are raw and red. They will never be clean again.

And then, he teaches him.

What horrible things we do for the ones we love the most, he thinks, and he scours the room for any traces of feathers and death. There are none, and he isn't sure how he can be so grateful about that. The entire time Gellert spends sitting on the bed, hiccupping on tiny sobs.

**VI.**

It's a terrible thing, to love a beast. But how could he deny Gellert anything, when the only thing that can chase away his nightmares is the sight of Gellert's sleeping face.

The boy has become like a son to him in the time he has spent wandering the world a century ago. His trips through time, or dreams, have become frequent enough for him to see Gellert every day. His sleeping cycle is in shambles because he wants to sleep his life away and be with his golden child, and nothing matters if it won't mean something to the boy.

He covers up for Gellert. He teaches him how to lie, how to hide the blood, how to look harmless. All the while he knows that Gellert will be the death of him.

**VII.**

''How can they do this to me?!''

Gellert is furious, raging, and he throws things – vases, music boxes, ink pots – at the walls. His mother refused to send him to Hogwarts, and no amount of begging could make her change her mind.

Harry pulled him in a hug from behind, feeling Gellert's muscles tense up in preparation of striking him, but then the boy relaxes into his touch.

''I know, I'm sorry.'' He murmurs in the crook of Gellert's neck.

The wind whistles and musses up Gellert's hair. Harry's stays completely still. There are twenty one pigeons sitting on top of the building next door, and Gellert breaks down crying in his arms.

**VIII.**

Durmstrang isn't so bad. Harry sees it for the first time along with Gellert, and he marvels at the vast grass planes surrounding it. It's beautiful in a way only cold, drab castles can be.

Gellert asks him if it's more beautiful than Hogwarts. Harry lies to him and says yes.

**IX.**

The years pass by in a whirlwind. It's harder to control Gellert when there are so many things around him, all of them new and breath-taking. It's harder still when he starts growing up and rebelling.

And then – ''I'm leaving.''

They throw him out. Gellert had always been different, Harry knows that, but this…?

They throw him out because he tampered with things he wasn't meant to. With forbidden things. And for all that Harry can hide the evidence of his midnight excursions and bloody experiments, he can do nothing for things that are already known. He is intangible to all but Gellert, but he isn't almighty.

And Harry can do nothing when Gellert, angry and humiliated and the most brilliant student to pass through Durmstrang, leaves for Britain, eager to test out what Harry had taught him for himself.

**X.**

Albus Dumbledore is everything Gellert had wanted in a friend. He's ambitious, he's loyal, and he's just as brilliant as he is. Harry can only watch as the transfiguration prodigy is pulled into the rabbit hole after Gellert.

He can see how desperately in love with Gellert Albus is, and no matter what Harry says to Gellert, the golden boy – a man almost – won't stop playing with the poor boy.

**XI.**

He stands over Ariana Dumbledore's broken body as the three young men realise what they had done. Gellert is fascinated by the way her eyes had glazed over.

There are purple bruises blooming on her white skin, and apple flowers bloom on the trees outside in the garden.

**XII.**

Harry doesn't want to dream anymore. He cannot bear to see what Gellert had made himself into. The little angel, the one who was supposed to redeem him of the sins committed in the War, is now a bigger monster than Voldemort had ever been.

Voldemort had done everything he did because he was mad, because he wanted revenge for some imagined slight. Gellert wants to conquer the world because he can, and because it will be fun to him.

And so, Harry tries not to sleep, tries to abandon the broken boy. He cannot bear to see him anymore.

**XIII.**

''You left me.'' Gellert hisses the next time Harry sees him, and Harry's horrified to realise that the child he adored was now a man with broad shoulders and fury in his clenched fists. Where it had been three days for him, it had been several years for Gellert.

''I did.''

It rains in Germany, and Harry doesn't want to think of all the things Gellert had done. The things he is still doing.

It rains in Germany, and Harry pulls the boy into his arms, feels Gellert tense up in preparation of striking him, and then relax into his touch. There are no people in the streets other than them, and Gellert breaks down crying.

**XIV.**

It's cold and crisp, and he breathes in the scent of snow. Gellert is sitting next to him, looking awfully young and innocent under the moonlight. This is no Nurmengard, no grave or asylum. This is just a frostbitten park, with the both of them sitting on a bench.

''Hello.''

Gellert is smiling at him the way he hadn't done in years, and Harry smiles back at him. Somehow, someway, while he destroyed himself trying to save Gellert, he had found his salvation.

''Hello to you, too.''

They sit there together, Gellert's once more childish fingers entwined with his own, and the snow falls from the sky like torn up flowers.

**Unedited.**

**Unbeta'd.**


End file.
